


Tired

by the_ocean_burned



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam is tired and has no self-esteem, Angst, Eavesdropping, First Kiss, Fluff, Getting Together, Not Canon Compliant, Pining, Pre-Slash, Ronan Lynch is Bad at Feelings, Ronan and Gansey are v good brothers, Tumblr Ask Box Fic, Tumblr Prompt, i love that that's a tag, lots of introspection, oh well, someone hug him, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-09-24 14:09:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9751565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_ocean_burned/pseuds/the_ocean_burned
Summary: Adam is tired.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> haha this is angsty as all hell have fun suffering

Pynch – “things you said that I wasn’t meant to hear”

 

Adam was tired.

He supposed this shouldn’t have surprised him anymore. He was constantly tired, thanks to school and homework and late-night shifts at the warehouse and the long hours spent doing Cabeswater’s work and traipsing around the valley searching for Glendower. Adam couldn’t remember if it had been three days or five days – or longer – since he’d last been able to sleep for more than an hour at a time.

Really, Adam probably should have skipped out on pizza night and just gone to St. Agnes and slept, but Gansey had asked Adam to be there and Adam didn’t want to cause a fight. _Don’t fight with Gansey. Don’t fight with Blue._ Gansey had asked Adam to come to Monmouth, so Adam would be there for at least a little while, just to avoid Gansey’s disappointment. And so, Adam found himself parking his shitty car in front of Monmouth instead of going back to the church and collapsing on his shitty mattress. The BMW was pulled up to the building as well, so Adam assumed Ronan was inside.

Adam realized just how bad an idea this was when he stepped out of the car and immediately had to grab at the top to keep from keeling over when a wave of vertigo crashed into him. It only lasted a moment, but Adam knew it was a bad sign. Usually he didn’t let his sleep deprivation get that far. Straightening tentatively, Adam decided he’d have to go in just long enough to let Gansey know that he was taking a raincheck. There was no way he’d last the night without passing out entirely, and he needed to get back to St. Agnes before he couldn’t drive anymore. _If I’d realized I was this tired, I wouldn’t have come in the first place._

There were raised voices emanating from behind the closed door when Adam reached it. This wasn’t too unusual; Ronan was at Monmouth, so it was no surprise that someone was shouting. Adam reached up to knock anyway, too tired to care if he interrupted yet another pointlessly heated argument between Ronan and Gansey about whether or not pineapple was an acceptable pizza topping, and he heard his name.

Adam paused. By the way everything on the other side of the door had gone silent, Adam had been the trump card. Adam wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about that. It depended on the context, he supposed. In the long seconds of silence that were stretching thin as taffy, Adam tried to figure out exactly _what_ the context was.

There was a soft noise – an exasperated sigh, definitely from Gansey. Adam could almost see him: the bridge of his nose pinched between his fingers, eyes squeezed shut tiredly.

_“Ronan –”_

“No.” Ronan’s voice was sharp and flat, his tone the same one he used when he was about to either walk away from a fight with Declan or punch someone in the face.

 _“Ronan,”_ Gansey repeated. “Relax. It’s fine if –”

“It is _not_ fine!” Ronan snarled, every ounce of his defensive venom in his words and every one of his protective spines jabbed outward. “It is not fucking _fine,_ Gansey, and you damn well know it.”

Another sigh. Adam blinked at the wood of the door, confused. He didn’t understand anything.

“Ronan,” Gansey said again, gentler this time. "It’s fine with me. It’s perfectly fine if –”

Ronan cut him off again, much to Adam’s frustration. _This would be so much less confusing if Ronan would ever let Gansey finish his damn sentences._ “Yeah, with _you._ What about with _him?_ I can guarantee that it wouldn’t be _fine_ with Adam.”

Ronan practically spit the word _fine,_ as if it burned his throat and his tongue on its way out of him. Adam’s confusion only grew.  Ronan was angry, yes, but this was the kind of anger borne of real insecurity and real fear. Adam knew it better than he would’ve liked. What about _Adam,_ of all people, was making Ronan react like _this?_ Adam’s thoughts were a tangled mess of bewilderment and exhaustion and the barest scrap of understanding tickling the edges of his mind.

“Adam wouldn’t mind, either,” Gansey said. A bit of indignation rose in Adam’s chest, but he quashed it almost immediately with curiosity. _Gansey doesn’t know I’m listening._

Adam got the sudden impression that he _shouldn’t_ be listening. This sounded like something that Gansey was only reluctantly privy to, and Adam was eavesdropping.

“How do you know?” Ronan demanded. “How do you know that it’d all be fine? I get that you’re optimistic, Gansey, but for fuck’s sake.”

“Oh, Ronan.” Gansey’s voice was so quiet Adam could barely hear it, and his tone was strange. It was still gentle, but in a different way, as if Gansey was trying to comfort a crying child.

From the hitched breath that came shortly afterward, that wasn’t a wholly incorrect statement.

The floor tilted beneath Adam’s feet and he grabbed at the wall for balance, but this time, it wasn’t vertigo’s fault. This, apparently, was all on Adam. Ronan Lynch was _crying_ – or close to it – over something _Adam_ had done, and something in Adam’s chest hurt with that realization.

Adam searched his memory frantically for something – _anything_ – that he had done to do this to Ronan. He came up blank and panicked. He and Ronan hadn’t fought in weeks. There was _nothing._

_What is going on?_

More silence from behind the door, with the exception of an occasional choked noise from Ronan or the murmur of Gansey’s nearly-inaudible reassurances. Adam still felt unsteady on his feet.

“I can’t just tell him,” Ronan said minutes later, his voice raw. “I can’t do that to him. Adam’s stressed enough. I’m not going to just spring this on him out of nowhere.”

“I don’t think it’s exactly ‘out of nowhere’ if you’ve felt like this for a while,” Gansey replied in that same gentle tone of voice.

With a jolt, Adam realized what this was about. This was about Ronan’s crush on him.

Ronan made a noncommittal humming noise. “Yeah, I guess. And I’m sure he knows already.” Ronan sighed, slow and heavy. “I don’t want to hurt him, Gansey.”

Adam could hear what Ronan wasn’t saying. _He’s been hurt too much already._ Without seeing Gansey’s expression, Adam had no way of knowing if Gansey understood what Ronan left unsaid, but Adam had heard enough.

He turned and made his way back down the stairs and out to his shitbox of a car. In the time it took him to walk from the door to the car, what he’d heard was slowly beginning to sink in.

Adam sat in his car for a long time, staring blankly up at the many windows of Monmouth’s second story, not really seeing any of it. Without thinking, Adam grabbed the bottle of lotion Ronan had left in his car and began to fiddle with it. _Manibus. I don’t want to hurt him, Gansey. It’s not fine._

 _Damn_ Ronan Lynch. Damn him for making Adam think that there was even the slightest chance of a happy relationship for someone like Adam. Damn him for being so careful around Adam. Damn him for treating him like he was breakable – which Adam was – and worth protecting – which Adam was not. Damn him for making Adam feel wanted.

 _Damn_ him for making Adam want to storm back into Monmouth and kiss him as hard as he could.

Adam did not return to Monmouth and he did not kiss Ronan. Instead, Adam pulled his car away from the curb and returned to his shitty apartment and curled up on his shitty bed. Adam fell asleep wishing he _had_ kissed Ronan.

Adam was exhausted.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess who isn't dead

Adam was tired.

This was nothing out of the ordinary. His life was hectic and stressful and confusing. As a result, Adam Parrish was almost constantly tired.

Generally, Adam was so physically tired that it overshadowed every other kind of exhaustion that had made a home out of the hollowed-out spaces between Adam’s ribs. But he had slept only the night before, so for the moment, his physical exhaustion had been assuaged. On one hand, this meant Adam had a considerably easier time concentrating on his work, his classes, and his college applications, but on the other, it meant less familiar kinds of tiredness had room to rear their ugly heads.

For instance, now Adam could feel exactly how much of an emotional toll the stress of his life was taking on him. He could practically feel his motivation withering away with every essay or Latin assignment he turned in, with every scholarship he was denied, with every college application he sent in. he could feel the way that every shift at the garage and the factory and the warehouse drained him just a little bit more. He could feel how close to giving up on everything he had worked so hard to get for so long just to relieve a little bit of the stress that pressed down on his conscious. He could feel how much closer he got to letting go of all of those dreams he was so close to living out with every late night and subsequent early mornings. Without the specter of his father telling him he wasn’t good enough to spite him into being motivated, Adam knew he would have given up by now. He had to prove to himself, at least, that he was better than his father’s expectations, better than his childhood, better than the swill that ran through his veins in place of his blood.

Another thing the exhaustion had been dulling was the reality of the conversation Adam had overheard a little over a week ago. Ronan had told Gansey about his feelings for Adam, unaware that Adam had been listening in from behind the door.

It wasn’t like it had been surprising news. Adam had already suspected that Ronan was crushing on him. Adam just couldn’t figure out _why._ What could someone like Ronan like so much about someone like Adam? Adam didn’t have money. He didn’t have any influence. He had no particular talent in anything. He wasn’t especially attractive, or kind, or otherwise extraordinary. The only thing about Adam that was abnormal was his connection with Cabeswater, but even that was surely nothing special to Ronan, who could give dreams physical form if he wanted to. More than one sleepless night had been spent pondering what Ronan could see in Adam, and Adam had never come up with anything but a confused blank.

Adam’s first thought had been that it was out of pity. Ronan, who had grown up loved, had seen Adam, who had not grown up loved, and tried to make up for Adam’s parents’ failings. But that couldn’t be right, Adam knew, because Ronan wasn’t like that. Ronan could create impossible things, things that shouldn’t exist, but Ronan could not fabricate emotions. And even if he could, Ronan wouldn’t do that. Ronan was a very real creature and anything he felt for Adam, no matter how illogical, was just as real. Adam knew that.

But he still couldn’t figure out why it had been Adam, rather than Gansey, or Noah, or any of the other infinitely rich and intelligent and talented boys that went to Aglionby, who had caught Ronan Lynch’s attention.

He supposed it didn’t matter.

There was something flattering, he had to admit, about this whole thing. _Look,_ he wanted to shout. _I am more than my father. I might be worth something. Ronan Lynch thinks I’m worth something._ But Adam was not going to manipulate Ronan or use Ronan as some kind of – some kind of experiment, so Adam didn’t say anything about it. He wanted to be absolutely sure that he could reciprocate Ronan’s feelings before he did anything. Ronan was fierce, but he was fragile and frightened, and Adam didn’t want to be at fault for breaking him. He’d never be able to forgive himself.

Was Adam attracted to Ronan? Yes, of course. He hadn’t been, at first, because Ronan had been so hostile told him, but the longer Adam spent around Ronan the more he realized that Ronan was just afraid of being left behind. The more Adam got to know Ronan, the more he realized how kind Ronan was, how truly _good_ he was despite the drinking and the street racing and the swearing and his way of making his words as cruel as they were honest. Or maybe because of all that. Adam didn’t know. Everything about Ronan was tangled and messy and confusing and, for some reason, Adam enjoyed all the strange, warm, unfamiliar feelings that came with.

Adam did not understand anything.

Ronan had taken to stopping by the garage and keeping Adam company during his late-night shifts, when Boyd had already gone home and Adam was alone in the shop. It was nice. Ronan didn’t go out of his way to be rude, and he usually ended up giving Adam a ride back to St. Agnes and crashed beside Adam’s mattress for the night. Honestly, Adam was just glad not to be alone. Things always seemed worse when he was alone. Adam had never learned how to go to people for help, so it wasn’t like he could just ask Gansey or Ronan or Blue for company at three in the morning just because he felt _lonely._ He wasn’t selfish enough to infringe on their already-dubious sleep schedules to make them deal with his issues. They had enough of their own problems to worry about; they didn’t need to stress about his, too. They worried anyway, though, which Adam appreciated, even if he didn’t fully understand.

This night was like most: Adam was finishing up work at the garage when Ronan slipped inside, Chainsaw hunched on his shoulder. Ronan leaned against the work bench and kept a careful eye on Chainsaw when she hopped down and started to explore. Adam smiled at Ronan and then went back to work; he had to finish this, and conversation would only distract him. Even bent over the engine of the 2003 Honda Civic he was working on, Adam could feel Ronan’s eyes on him. Ronan glanced at Adam, then away again, trying as hard as usual to hide his interest in Adam.

All of a sudden, Adam was exceedingly tired.  

He was tired of always dodging around the truth. He was tired of having to tiptoe around this massive elephant in the room. He was tired of having to pretend he didn’t know. He was tired of letting Ronan believe that he was being subtle. He was tired of doing _nothing_ when Adam _knew_ there was something he could be doing. He was tired of hiding. He was tired of pretending. He was tired of avoiding this _thing_ that lived between himself and Ronan for fear that it would explode in his face. He was tired of the late nights filled with _why_ s and _what if_ s.

Adam was exhausted.

He sighed quietly through his nose and straightened, meeting Ronan’s gaze over the top of the Honda. Ronan looked away, pretending to be supervising Chainsaw.

“I already know, Ronan.”

“Know what, Parrish?”

The words were casual, but Adam heard the practiced way Ronan clipped them and he didn’t miss the way the line of Ronan’s shoulders tensed, defensive. Adam sighed again, wiped his hands on the pant legs of his coveralls, and moved around the car to stand in front of Ronan.

“I know why you look at me like that. I know why you paid my rent, and asked for help with Greenmantle and your father’s dreams. I know about all of it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ronan ground out tensely. He wouldn’t meet Adam’s eyes.

Adam was tired of this bullshit.

He grabbed Ronan’s face and kissed him. Adam didn’t think about it, or plan it, or even intend to do it, honestly. But he did it anyway. Ronan tensed, and for a second, Adam was afraid that Ronan would pull away. That Adam had interpreted this all wrong. Then Ronan made a tiny noise of relief, leaned forward, and pulled Adam closer.

Adam had never been more awake in his life.

**Author's Note:**

> scream at me on tumblr  
> http://the-ocean-burned.tumblr.com/


End file.
